


Waiting for the Dark

by phainopepla



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Brainwashing, Everybody Loves Torture Droids, F/M, Healing Sex, Hurt/Comfort, If You Call That Healing, Nightmares, Sex, Sith Get Lonely Too, So Very Unhealthy, Temporary Amnesia, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-16 16:55:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 13,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5833333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phainopepla/pseuds/phainopepla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Kylo Ren leaves the interrogation chamber, General Hux moves in to attempt to extract the information, leaving a broken Rey behind. With her mind in tatters, Kylo Ren sees an opportunity to shape her into the student he wants and the companion that he needs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If you are looking for Kylo Ren to be redeemed to the light, Force Persuade: This is not the fic you're looking for.  
> If you are seeking a model of healthy emotionally-stable relationships on which to base your real-life adult love life, run. Run over the hills and far away, to better lands than these.  
> But if you want torture and the nice Sith lord holding you when you cry so that he can ultimately seduce you to the Dark Side and eventual fucking, then you may be in luck. I can even promise a happy ending. For a very, very unhealthy value of happy.

The world was a sea of pain and Rey had drowned in it long ago.

Most of her senses were gone. She was blind and all she could taste was blood and the hard copper taste of electrocution. The smell of her own sweat, thick with fear, had drowned out the tang of recycled air.

She thought that she was probably still in the chair, but she could not tell. The pain was all around her, but it had become so much part of her that she could no longer tell where she ended and the pain began. In a way, that made it easier. It no longer mattered what they did. If she was the pain and the pain was her, if they hurt her, it only made her larger.

It was the torture droid that had hurt her most. It had come in, led by the red-haired man, when Kylo Ren had left the room. She had thought—for a moment, she thought she might escape.

Stupid. Only an idiot would station a Stormtrooper who could be influenced by the Force to guard a Force Sensitive prisoner.

The red-haired man had been followed by a black sphere, and that was when Ren had begun to feel terror instead of rage.

She had scavenged a droid like that once. It had looked harmless, lying in the medical bay of the downed Star Destroyer. Part of it had been crushed and what remained looked like a dead black jellyfish, limp metal tentacles swaying beneath it.

One of the other scavengers had to explain to her what it was.

Rey had looked at it, at the thin little prongs at the end of the tentacles, and the letters _IT-0_ on the side, and felt a deep disquiet in the bottom of her mind.

The red-haired man had asked her questions about the map, just as Kylo Ren had. But he did not touch her. He asked, and she refused to answer, and somewhere else on the ship, for an instant she felt the Sith Lord’s presence.

_(Is he watching my mind while his friend distracts me, to try to find the map?)_

She pulled herself as deep inside her mind as she could, polishing the surface with the Force until it was like steel, like adamant, like diamond—

The red-haired man touched a knob on the side of the droid and it drifted up to her and stretched out its metal tendrils. A light shown in her eyes, blindingly bright, and shattered the diamond into a thousand pieces.

 

Rey floated in and out of consciousness. She could still hear, a little.

She heard a door. Footsteps. And then a scream of rage and something washed over the flayed edges of her mind, something dark and burning.

Pain no longer frightened her, but this was something other than pain. She shrank away from it and the restraints cut into her wrists and her ribs. The pain came for her again and she floated in the dark for a little while, hearing words, not really understanding them.

“She heard that,” said the red-haired man, sounding amused. “You should stay here, that’s the most response I’ve gotten in an hour.”

“Butcher,” said another voice. “What have you done?”

_(who was it? she’d heard that voice before somewhere)_

“What does it look like?”

_(hadn’t she? but the voice had gone cold, colder than the rage that preceded it and that was frightening and she couldn’t remember)_

“I know what it looks like! We wanted a map, General! What do you think she’s going to do now, _blink_ the coordinates out?”

The red-haired man sounded almost sullen. “You weren’t getting any farther. I assumed you knew what I was doing.”

Silence. An answer too low to hear. She began to drift again, farther away from her body. Bodies were so much effort. She felt very cold.

Beeping. Someone swore. She was not sure if it was the familiar voice or the red-haired man. Then the droid was touching her again, metal clamping over her face, and she tried to scream but there was something actually in her mouth and then there was a hiss of shocking cold through the roof of her mouth.

Whatever drug it had delivered went directly into her brain. Rey could feel her body again. She wished she couldn’t. Even through her eyelids, the light was invasively bright, and the thing in her mouth cut against her gums. It felt sharp.

“Get it off her.”

_(who was that?)_

“It won’t kill her. It’s good at that. They make them out of medical droids, you know.”

A noise. A high lightsaber whine, and the metal thing jerked out of her mouth, cutting her lips. She smelled burning.

“Well, _that’s_ going to be expensive to fix,” said the red-haired man, exasperated. “It didn’t hurt her that badly. The drugs make it hurt more, that’s all.”

The restraints clacked. A bar across her chest eased. She hadn’t realized that it had been keeping her from breathing deeply, and then she tried and regretted it terribly. She coughed and felt her throat tearing itself into pieces.

She fell forward. Someone had moved the chair, or the base, or the universe. She fell against cloth and flesh, and she tried to claw at them—they must be the enemy, they were here, there was nothing here but pain and the enemy and she must stop them before—before—

She had her hands around someone’s throat and she was too weak to close her fingers. Hot tears of frustration welled under her eyelids. She knew when they fell by the stinging line of salt across her torn lips.

“Still trying, is she?” The red-haired man was somewhere over her right shoulder. She would have preferred to strangle him, given the choice. So it was someone else in front of her, but that was all right, there were enough enemies, anyone she touched was bound to be an enemy in this place.

She tried to use the Force to close her fists, and felt her soul guttering like a candle.

Her enemy gently pulled her hands away from his throat.

_Such beautiful rage._

The thought startled her. It didn’t sound like something she would think. And yet that, too, was naggingly familiar. She’d heard thoughts like that before…before…

_(where?)_

The pain was a wall across her memory.

_It will be all right._

_(no it won’t it can’t be I’ll kill you I’ll find a way)_

The world moved again. She was falling—or no, someone was picking her up. The enemy

_(was he? why did he seem familiar? it was a man’s voice in her head but not…not her friend…her friend whose name she couldn’t remember…)_

had his arms under her knees and shoulders and her head fell toward him and he blotted out the light that had been too bright and the darkness was such a blessed relief that she fainted.

 

 

She woke what was either a thousand years later or a few heartbeats. She drew in a breath and stopped just in time before she reached the hurting place in her lungs and began to cough.

 _Butcher._ She heard the man’s thoughts again, but distantly, as if he was talking to someone else.

If she stayed silent, perhaps he would not know that she had woken up. Perhaps he would leave her and she could lie quiet for a little while. If she was quiet for long enough, maybe her lungs would stop hurting, or she would stop breathing all together, and either one seemed good.

 _It will be all right,_ he said in her head again. She did not dare even think in reply.

He was still carrying her. It could not have been that long, then. The lights were moving overhead, the broad bars of light and dark that meant they were in a corridor on a ship. Doors opened. A voice distorted by a helmet said, “Excuse me, my lord,” and then another door and another.

“I know you’re awake,” he said, when the last door had closed. He spoke aloud. She could hear his voice through the side of her body as much as her ears.

_(don’t say anything don’t move)_

“This may hurt,” he said, not responding to the fleeting thought. “I’m going to set you down.”

It did hurt. She held her breath, which helped. She was on something soft. She had forgotten that anything in the world was soft, except for flesh.

The light, though—the light was terrible. It scoured through her eyelids. If she was blind, why did the light hurt so badly?

Perhaps she thought that loudly enough for him to hear. She heard him rise and walk away, and then there was darkness, much darker than before.

The relief was so intense that it was almost frightening. If she was made of pain and the pain went away, did that mean she went away too? Would there be anything left of her?

_(perhaps that won’t be so bad)_

_(if there’s nothing left they can’t do anything to me)_

“No one will do anything else to you.”

The enemy sat down beside her head. She would have recoiled but her muscles were weak as water. She had used the last of her strength trying to kill him, and now nothing remained.

He brushed the hair away from her forehead. His hands were fever warm.

_You’re safe._

_(nowhere is safe)_

The voice in her head was calm, insistent, but she could feel something frightening behind it, like a beast behind a locked door. _You are safe here._

_(will kill you)_

He did not answer that. She thought he was amused.

“Sleep,” he said out loud. “I’ll keep you safe.”

She did not want to sleep, but he was here and she knew him from—somewhere?—and he had taken her away from the red-haired man and from the metal thing that had carved such terrible queasy pain inside her skin.

He made a sound, something less than music, more than breathing. A tuneless crooning, not quite a lullaby, yet oddly soothing.

Perhaps the Force was behind it, making her sleep. Perhaps it was something else. For a moment, she heard an echo of the sound inside her head, only in a woman’s voice, half-remembered.

 _(General Organa?)_ she thought, and then she slept.


	2. Chapter 2

Kylo Ren gazed down at the woman in his bed and felt…pleased.

He did not have other people in his quarters often, and never in his bed. It made him feel exposed, even if he had moved the artifact where she would not see it.

Nevertheless, he would not leave her in a holding cell where General Hux could get to her. Even the General would draw the line at invading Ren’s private quarters.

Had she been well, he would not have left her anywhere unless she was restrained and weighed down with chains. But the girl was no threat to anyone now, except perhaps herself. She could not have wrestled her way free of a blanket, and the interrogation drugs had left her mind as vulnerable as her body.

Even now, he could see a nightmare beginning. Her brow knit and the Force that swirled round her grew dark and muddled.

It was fascinating to watch. The strands of Force floated around her like cobwebs, crossing and re-crossing. They knotted together and turned bruised and ugly as the dream gained power.

He stroked her forehead, loosening the tangled strands of power, and she quieted. Experimentally, he tweaked a few of the bruised threads, gave them power.

They pulsed together, the nightmare gaining traction again. The girl shifted and her breathing rasped in her damaged throat.

He wiped it away with his hand a second time. It had been a long time since his presence brought anyone ease. He savored the sensation.

The truth was that Kylo Ren wanted her.

Not for her body, although he intended to enjoy that as well. But not now. Her skin was covered in blood and bruises, her face a mask of tears. Doubtless Hux would have found that attractive, but Kylo did not.

Even cleaned up, she would be too lanky and her bones too strong for beauty, but the purity of her rage was more lovely than any human face could be.

But he would have wanted her if she were a thousand years old, or an alien, or half-mechanical. He would have wanted her if she were a ghost of the Force or a…a Wookie, for that matter.

He had known it from the instant he lifted her in his arms in the forest. The sensation had slammed into him as if he had been kicked in the chest— _this girl is mine._

She was Force Sensitive like he was. She had power and grief and rage. She, too, had been betrayed.

She, too, had no one.

It was like looking into a mirror made of light. He wanted to reach through the mirror and bring her to stand next to him.

He had been alone for so long. Even in his childhood, his power had set him apart. There was always a wall between him and everyone else, unseen, but felt all the same.

Supreme Leader Snoke had offered him what seemed like companionship, a meeting of two Force Sensitive minds, but that had failed and faded. Now he was more a servant than a student, and he knew it.

But this girl…

She could be his. She could belong to him as no one else did. He could take her, body and soul, heart and mind.

It would not be one-sided. He would teach her. She was strong, but so untrained that she was vulnerable to every passing whim of the Force. He would teach her, protect her, make her his student, his lover, his faithful shadow. She should be grateful.

By the time he was finished, she _would_ be grateful.

He coaxed apart another nightmare before it had time to settle, and sent a little Force healing down the threads. Her breathing grew deeper, easier.

The Jedi would never tell anyone that Force healing was cousin to Force killing. It was the same pathways, the same power. And Kylo Ren was very good at killing.

The Supreme Leader had given him permission to try to turn her, but even the Supreme Leader did not know what he intended.

_You’ll be my student. You will be mine._

_You_ are _mine._

He bent over her, his lips against her forehead, and began to whisper into her dreams.


	3. Chapter 3

She woke. She could not remember where she was.

It seemed like this was a common enough thing to feel upon waking, but the moment stretched longer and longer and no clarity came. She opened her eyes, only a crack. Her eyelids felt gritty and stuck together.

The room was dark, but there was a little dim light on the far side. It cast the faintest glow over the room. All the shapes were unfamiliar. It looked to be a cabin in a ship, but not one she recognized. She was on a bed platform, low to the ground, with a blanket over her.

She squeezed her eyes shut again. Even that brief glimpse had set them watering and woke a pounding headache up insider her skull.

The platform that she was lying on creaked. Fabric rustled.

_(there’s someone else here I didn’t notice them why didn’t I notice)_

Warm hands lifted her shoulders. There was something against her lips.

“Drink,” he said aloud.

She wanted to fight. It was the enemy, and who knew what the enemy might make her drink? But she was suddenly thirsty, as thirsty as if she had spent hours in the desert.

Her body knew better than she did. She drank.

It was water. It stung her cracked lips and it was so cold that it burned all the way down. She gasped for air and began to shiver, then struggled to drink more.

He laid his wrist across her forehead and his skin was as hot as the water had been cold. She braced herself to feel something from him, but his mind was opaque.

He lowered her back down and rose. She heard him going away again. Water ran somewhere near by. She hoped that he was bringing her more to drink.

_(it might be poison)_

_(or he could simply drown me. I could hardly stop him now.)_

She could not laugh, but she gave a short, barking breath, and then lay exhausted. She could not remember who he was, or why he might want to drown her. She could not remember who she was. Only that she was alone and surrounded by enemies, and this one, for some strange reason, had given her water to drink.

Was she on Jakku? Jakku was a desert. There were rules in the desert, and one of them was that you gave water even to your enemies.

_(why can I remember Jakku I can’t remember anything else this is not Jakku the air tastes wrong how did I get here)_

Her enemy returned. She heard the click as he set something down on the floor beside her.

He pulled the blanket back and she realized that she was naked.

Panic rose up in her, howling like a sandstorm, and she struck out wildly with fists and Force. She would have used her teeth if they were all she had left. He would not—he _must_ not—not after—

She felt her blow land, with hardly any power behind it. He didn’t even flinch. Her ribs screamed as the skin pulled against a wound she hadn’t known was there.

The Force strike vanished, swallowed up, as if she had tried to slap a rancor with her bare hand.

“Are you finished?” he asked, taking her hand between his.

She was not finished. She would never be finished. If she was too weak to kill him, very well, she would force him to kill her.

He pinned her wrists effortlessly, leaned down, and a moment later a damp cloth touched her face.

_(what)_

It was warm. Her face was a mask of filth and blood. She had not known until he began to wipe it away.

Some of the wounds reopened again. His mind was as opaque as ever, but he hesitated for an instant as the blood welled up.

It was soothing, oddly impersonal. When he dipped the cloth in water—it must have been a basin on the floor—and wiped it over her eyes, she opened them a little and saw his face.

He was pale and angular, all bones and angles. He was terribly familiar, but she could not think where she knew him from. His hair was long and dark and shadowed one side of his face as he worked.

Her strange, gentle enemy. He did not look like a man with a prisoner in his power. He had a distant, shuttered expression that she did not understand.

He glanced up toward her face and she closed her eyes again rather than meet his gaze.

Blood had crusted around her left ear. The torture droid knew that humans hated having things inside their bodies. She could still feel the squirming of the metal tendril in her ear canal and she shuddered violently.

_(metal there was so much metal it was inside me it was so cold)_

He stopped. She knew that he was watching her, and that made her weakness worse. He was her enemy and she was showing him every hole in her defenses. But he only waited until she had stopped shaking, and then dipped the cloth into the water again and went on.

He washed her neck, very carefully. There were scabs up and down her throat where the droid had injected drugs directly into the veins. She felt, for the first time, the faintest prickle of the Force in his touch.

_(what is he doing)_

_(is he using it to keep anything from breaking open?)_

_(can you do that?)_

It seemed that he could. Perhaps that would be worth learning—how to keep someone’s blood inside their body.

He rose and came back with fresh water.

She felt the panic rising again as he set the cloth across her collarbone. Her heart thudded against her ribs. She stank of blood and fear-sweat and there were wounds that should be cleaned—she knew they had to be, wounds would fester if you didn’t clean them, she’d seen it happen on Jakku but—

He stopped. He put his hands on either side of her face.

_Look at me._

Her eyes were open before it occurred to her to resist.

His face blotted out most of the light. His eyes were deeply shadowed.

She could feel his mind pressing down on hers, imposing calm from the outside.

_I will not hurt you. Hush. You’re safe with me. Hush._

She fought back instinctively against the pressure. She would not be calm. She would never be calm again.

_(no no I won’t I’ll kill you)_

_Fear is the path to the Dark Side,_ he said, and the shadows moved as he smiled. _Hush. You don’t need to be afraid._

He swept his thumbs over her cheekbones. His mind was heavy over hers, heavy like a blanket or the weight of sleep. One by one, her muscles began to relax.

_(he’s doing something to me)_

Whatever it was, it was effective. Slowly, slowly, the panic eased. The tightness in her chest loosened. Her body no longer felt like a panicked animal.

When her body had relaxed, he turned to her mind. His was a deep, velvet darkness, pressing down. Under that darkness, nothing could find her. _Hush. Hush. You’re safe._

She had been afraid for so long that she could hardly understand its absence. Her chest began to tighten again, as if trying to fill the gap left behind, and he stopped it. _Hush._

Eventually he picked up the cloth again. He worked his way down her right arm, shoulder to palm. Her forearms were raw from the restraints. She had not realized that she had fought them quite so hard. Then the left arm, and for a moment, his fingers moved across the back of her hand.

She felt a quiver in her stomach. If it was not fear, it was at least a little like it. Enough like it that she felt movement in her mind— _Hush_ —and then, barely in a whisper, _Oh._

The water had cooled. For a moment, as he dabbed at her collarbone, his wrist lay across her breast and her nipple was hard against his skin.

She felt it as if it were against her own skin, from both sides at once. The thought came to her _Half-starved and three-quarters dead, her rage is the most beautiful thing about her but it is so very beautiful—_

“What?” she croaked, barely aloud. That was not _her_ thought.

She suffered a moment of disorientation, and then she felt as if a door had slammed in her head, and suddenly she was alone in her own body and his mind was as smooth and opaque as before.

He went away for a little while then. Without the weight of his mind holding her down, hiding her away, she could feel the fear trying to come back.

She could not think why she wanted it back.

_(what good does it do to be so afraid)_

He returned. He gave her more water to drink, and when she swallowed, she found the strength to say “Why am I…so weak?”

“The drugs,” he said. “The torture droid drugged you to make its job easier. They’ll pass.”

“The Force…I can’t…”

He shook his head. “If you drug a Force user, their gifts become as erratic as anything else. That will pass too. Drink.”

She drank obediently, over his thumb. It would pass. She would not spend the rest of her life too weak to move.

It did not occur to her not to believe him.

He set the water aside. “I need to finish this,” he said. “You’re bleeding all over my mattress.”

She breathed a laugh again.

The wound on her ribs was a burn, where the skin was very thin. He put something over it and the pain died away to vague queasiness.

He moved lower, and she no longer felt like laughing.

“Easy,” he said. He rested a hand on her belly, thumb across her hip. It felt shockingly intimate, like ownership, as if he thought he had the right to touch her there. “Easy.”

_(the enemy I am in the house of my enemy)_

Her enemy, who was dressing her wounds. Her enemy, who slipped a hand between her thighs and sponged the blood away, while the memory of pain and squirming metal rose up and took her by the throat.

She could not scream, but she made an awful sound of pain that rung in her own ears, and even that was better than the remembered whine of the droid and the taste of electricity in her mouth.

He hesitated for only a moment, and then his mind locked down over hers again.

This time it felt less like a blanket than a shield. There was something terrible out there, but that didn’t matter. She had found the key to the blast doors and locked them—or he had—someone had—it didn’t matter. The terrible thing was out there, not in here with her. She was safe.

_I told you. You’re safe now. I won’t let anyone hurt you._

It seemed, for a moment, like she felt that strange doubled sensation again, but surely not. That black rage could not belong to a man whose hands still moved so carefully. It must be her own rage that she was feeling.

Then it was done. He pulled the blanket back over her, but it was so little and she was so cold.

She had one last question. It had come to her when he laid his hand across her hip, and she clung to it through all that followed.

“…why are you doing…this?”

Her eyes were open just enough to see her enemy look up, though she could not see his expression. “I can help you,” he said. “Later. I can teach you things you need to know. But not now.”

He trailed his hand over her face, closing her eyelids. “Sleep.”

She wanted to obey, but she was still so cold. She had broken into a nervous sweat, and now it chilled her. Her teeth chattered. Why was she so cold?

She heard him moving around the room, and then he stood next to her, looking down.

“…cold…” she tried to say, or perhaps she only thought it.

There was a long silence. Then he moved away and she thought he had gone. She felt a stab of fear that he had left her alone and helpless.

_(he is my enemy I should not feel this)_

The bed creaked. He lay down beside her. He wore some kind of layered robes, but he was warm even through them. He curled up around her, carefully avoiding the burn on her ribs. She could feel his breath against her hair.

She had not slept against another person since she was a tiny child. It should have felt alien, but she was too cold and tired and broken.

She soaked up the heat of his body. At last the shivering stopped and she slept.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, one more short one to end the day on...

He was thinking of killing General Hux.

It was a fantasy only—he knew that the Supreme Leader would never allow it. But he savored it anyway, as he cradled his student in his arms, a violent dream where he lifted Hux off his feet and tore him apart with the Force, bone unmade from bone, one joint at a time.

_How dare he touch Rey like that?_

His hand clenched. He had slipped it between her breasts so that his fist lay over her heart. She did not wake.

Hux had asked him a few hours ago if he was done with his little Jedi whore yet. If so, Hux would like her back.

He had destroyed a conference table in response. It had been enormously satisfying.

“He will never touch you again,” he whispered into her sleeping ear. “No one will ever touch you like that again, except me. I swear to you.”

And then, an admission that he would never have made if she were awake, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t stop him sooner.”

Although, he had to admit, it did make things easier for him.

He wondered, had he known, would he have allowed Hux to go ahead anyway? Knowing that it would leave her so open to influence?

Probably not. He did not intend to lie to her, and it would be a long time before she would accept that such a thing might have been necessary. No one ever liked to admit that they had needed to be broken.

Breaking might have been necessary. Even torture. But he would not have let Hux do it. Hux should never have touched her.

He set his lips against her neck and felt her heart beating. Alive. Vulnerable. _His._ The sensation was so overwhelming that he had to close his eyes.  

That old fool Skywalker had told him once that love could be as dangerous as hate for a Jedi. A Jedi must forswear all passions.

He would never forswear this one.

_Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory._

_Through victory, my chains are broken._

The Sith code rang in his head. Rey whimpered in her sleep. Kylo Ren opened his eyes and found that he had sucked heat to the surface of her skin. It would leave a mark.

That was fine. He would leave many marks on her before he was done. And she on him, no doubt.

He was hard at the thought. He wished that she was awake and ready. He would have liked to take her right then, fast and brutal, and then again, more slowly, waking fire along her nerves until there was room for nothing in her mind or body but him.

But he had to go carefully at first. Gently. Kindly. Until she let him into her mind willingly. And after that…after that…

That chain they would forge together, and neither one would break it, into death and beyond.


	5. Chapter 5

When she woke the next time, her eyes ached less. She sat up. Her head felt as if plates were grinding together inside her skull.

She was alone in the room. She had to use the refresher dreadfully.

Planets were born and devoured by their suns in the time it took her to struggle from the bed to the narrow stall. ‘Fresher technology was the same for humanoids the galaxy over, thank the Force. She did not turn the light on, but her eyes were so dark adapted now that she could see herself in the mirror by the tiny electronic monitor lights.

She looked terrible. Her eyes were holes in her face. There was a red bruise on her throat. Still, she had expected something worse.

She had always healed quickly. Perhaps it was the Force, working unconsciously to knit flesh together. Her lips were cracked and painful, but no worse than when the desert dried them out.

The burn across her ribs was still tender. As for elsewhere…

There were long scrapes along her thighs. They were fewer and shallower than she had expected. It had been the drugs, then, and the horror of what was happening to her.

Her skull throbbed. She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the cold metal of the mirror.

She heard the door open. Light knifed over the room, then was cut off just as quickly as they closed.

“You’re walking,” her enemy said. He sounded surprised.

“Yes.” Her voice sounded as if she’d been kicked in the throat. The torture droid had slid its nasty metal tendrils down there as well, no doubt, filling her mouth and stopping her breath until she would have told them anything—anything—

_(the map flashing)_

_(only a glimpse)_

__She heard her enemy’s breath catch and tried to shut her thoughts down hard. When she could not, she flooded them instead with rage and that was easy.

_(kill you kill all of you all the enemy)_

He laughed softly. “Very good,” he said. “I barely got a look.”

_(tear you to pieces with my bare hands feed that red-haired bastard to his own torture droid)_

“Yes,” he said kindly. “I believe you will.”

And then he took her arm to lead her, step by halting step, to the bed. She had to lean against him because she could barely stand on her own.

She hated herself for being weak.

“It’s all right,” he said. “We’ll make you strong again. I can show you.”

_(if you make me strong again I’ll kill you)_

He did not seem to be concerned by this. He gave her something to drink, and it was broth this time. It was chalky with nutrient paste, something the medical droids made up, no doubt. It would give her strength, but for now, the act of swallowing was itself exhausting.

He sat beside her on the bed. She was still leaning against him. His arm curved around her, his hand on her hip again, that strange, intimate gesture of ownership. As if they had once been lovers.

_(have we? I don’t remember)_

_(was that it?)_

She tried to call up a memory from behind that dark wall of pain, a memory of his body over hers in the dark, something that would surely exist if they had been lovers in the past. She could find nothing.

He stiffened beside her, his fingers tightening on her skin. She heard him swallow hard.

_(he felt that)_

She reached for his free hand and twined her fingers with it. If they had been lovers, then it was not wrong to take comfort in this, it made sense—yet still she knew he was the enemy, she was certain of that, she was in the house of the enemy now, wherever that was.

Well. It would not be the first time that two people wound up on opposite sides of a battle.

Her head was on his shoulder. He turned his head and said something into her hair. It might have been “It’s not like that.” Or “Don’t do that.”

Had they not been, then?

“Jedi don’t,” he said. “One of the things that the Sith have dispensed with. Sensibly.”

She was not a Jedi. Someone had offered her a lightsaber—who was it? And she had seen dark men in cloaks, snow falling, death coming—

Her chest seized with terror and under the terror she found that she was angry at herself _(always so afraid why does it always come back to that I am so tired of being afraid)_

_I can teach you not to be afraid,_ he said inside her head.

_(no you can’t you’re afraid yourself look)_

And she reached into his mind and touched something that felt like dread.

For a heartbeat, she held his fear in her hands, and then his rage crashed down over her, black and thundering and that was good, that was clean, and her own rage rose to meet it and she reached for his throat again and this time she would end him and he would end her.

But he still had her hand in his and pulled it down, and all she had left was teeth. She lifted her head to bite at him.

He closed his mouth over hers.

A jolt went through her as if she’d been grazed by a blaster. Through both of them, she thought. She could feel his surprise and then he was fighting for control, tamping down some other emotion, his mind closing.

_(no no you won’t)_

She threw herself against the walls of his mind. It cost her energy she didn’t have and the edges of her mind frayed further, but that was not important. He was the enemy and this was hurting him and that was all that mattered.

His mouth was hard on hers and her bruised lips cracked and they both tasted blood.

It startled him more than her. He pulled back, breaking the kiss.

_Stop. I said I wouldn’t hurt you._

_(I’ll hurt_ you _)_ she thought fiercely.

He laughed. It wasn’t much more than her own barely-breathed laughter, but it was there. “If you think it would _hurt_ me to take you right here and now…”

The image came to her, clearly his—her body moving underneath him, driving himself into her over and over until she cried out. Her voice sounded high and thin, coming to her through his ears.

It was so vivid that for a moment she was not sure if it was a fantasy or a memory. She tried to push it away but he made sure that she saw it. Punishment, perhaps, for refusing to let him push her out of his mind.

She had never felt anything quite like it. Her breath caught and the rage in her heart warred with other emotions and tangled up together.

_(I’ll kill you I want you but I’ll kill you)_

“You don’t know what you want.”

He slid the hand on her hip down, only an inch or two, fingers tracing the tender line of skin, and her nerves thrilled at the touch and then just as quickly her throat closed and she tasted electricity and felt the dreadful scrape of metal across her flesh.

_(no no no get it out get it OUT!)_

_Careful!_ came his mental voice, and in some tiny clear part of her, she thought

_(well, that’s a stupid thing to think)_

but the larger part of her was back in the interrogation chair and what if she had never left, what if this was a drugged dream and she would come to in a moment and the red-haired man would be standing over her and the droid would have tendrils inside her moving like scavenging vermin inside a beast’s carcass and she would tell them anything, she would beg to tell them things she’d nearly forgotten, if only they would leave her alone in her own skin—

_Listen to me. You are here. You are safe._

\--what if she was curled in a cell and soon they would come for her to begin again—

_Stop. Stop._

_(help me I can’t breathe)_

_Listen. I’m here._

_(you are the enemy you let them do this please help me I’ll kill you)_

He swore. His mind came down hard on hers, somewhere between persuasion and paralysis. The weight was briefly crushing, but then the image of the interrogation room faded and was replaced by the dimly-lit cabin.

She felt herself falling forward. Her enemy caught her. Her face was pressed into his shoulder and her ear was rather uncomfortably squashed, but she could breathe again.

His hand lay on the back of her neck, and she could feel the Force slipping into her spine, along her nerves, coaxing apart the knots of terror.

_Hush. Breathe. I‘m here. I’ll help you._

Slowly, the panic subsided. Her muscles weren’t working, but at the moment, this seemed a small price to pay.

“We’re going to have to work on that,” he said. She wasn’t sure if he was talking to himself or to her, but since she agreed entirely with the sentiment, it didn’t really matter. “If I have to keep knocking you down, sooner or later it’s going to do real damage.”

_(damage I am already damaged)_

Her enemy chuckled. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We all are.”

He laid her out on the bed like a corpse on the pyre, handling her with exaggerated care. His hands were warm on her bare skin as he drew her arms and legs straight. She felt drugged, distant, as if she were watching the scene from the next room, and yet she clearly felt his thumb against her ankle bone, and then a moment later, his fingers curled around her wrist.

He could have taken anything he wanted, but he did not.

Why did that thought seem familiar?

Darkness lapped behind her eyelids. He pulled the blanket across her, then sat beside her.

“Everyone is afraid of something,” he said quietly. He did not look at her. It would have taken a superhuman effort to turn her head to look at him. “But I can teach you not to be afraid of this.”

He held her hand between his. Their wrists lay together, pulse to pulse. Hers was thready where his was strong, but hers had not stopped beating yet.

An end to fear. It was too much to hope for. But still, her last thought as she slept was

_(then teach me._ Please. _)_


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tense switch is deliberate for memories and dreams. We shall go back to our beloved past tense shortly.

In her dreams, Rey remembers her name.

She is in the crawlspace on Han Solo’s freighter with the alien beasts rampaging overhead, lashing their tentacles. Finn is beside her, his eyes wide, while she fumbles with the switches, trying to find the one that controls the door.

“Hurry!” he whispers “Hurry!”

The beast passes overhead. The pattern of light and dark changes as its bulk blots out the deckplates.

Rey cannot find the switch. She knows that she has done this before, she remembers it distantly, but the switches are different. She can’t read the text on them, although she should be able to do so easily. She knows that they are written in Galactic Basic, the language that nearly every sentient species can learn a few words of, but the letters mean nothing and seem to change at she looks at them.

At last she slaps two at random and the sounds overhead stop.

Rey gasps in triumph and relief and turns.

Finn is gone. The red-haired man crouches next to her. He turns his head and smiles. The metal tendrils of the torture droid come out of his mouth.

She throws herself backward, but she is trapped in the crawlspace with him. She tries to kick at him but she cannot move her legs. The red-haired man comes toward her. The long black prongs fasten over her face. She can feel it prying at her lips, sliding into her ears, and she screams in terror, but that only allows the droid to get inside her mouth and her teeth bite down and she tastes copper and pain and steel.

Cold red light blossoms around her.

A lightsaber comes down and slices through her attacker. She spits out blood and shards of metal and looks up.

It is her enemy. The one who has saved her twice now from her own fear. He takes her hand. She can feel his pulse beating against hers.

_I told you,_ he says, not aloud. _I won’t let anyone hurt you._

The droid is crawling along the ground like an injured spider. They are not in the crawlspace. They are in a forest in the snow. He leads her toward the droid, along the path that it has left as it flounders away.

_(No no get away from it! Don’t get so close!)_

She tries to resist, but he is stronger than is. She can walk beside him or be dragged.

He turns his face toward her and she sees teeth flash as he grins. _Yes. That is exactly right._

__They go together, step by step.

The trail is much longer than it should be. It twists and turns and there are dark drops in the snow that might be coolant or might be blood.

His hand is in hers. His lightsaber burns before them and leaves crimson highlights on the trees.

They are together. Even when her footsteps are very slow, so long as she is moving forward, he is beside her.

_I will not leave you._

_(do you promise?)_

_Yes._

__It does not matter what he answers. She has been left too many times. If her family has left her, how can she trust an enemy?

But his hand is still holding hers, and they are still together.

They are standing over the droid. It spasms on the ground, looking first like the torture droid and then like the red-haired man.

Her enemy turns to her.

“Kill it!” she whispers to him. She does not want to scream, for fear that it will attract the droid’s attention.

But he shakes his head. The red blade dies away.

_You must do it._

There is a lightsaber in her free hand. She does not remember picking it up.

She does not want it. She does not want to be a Jedi.

_No one will make you be a Jedi. But you must defend yourself._

_Let me teach you._

__As if she is a child who has never held a weapon, he steps behind her and lays his hands over hers. He is warm and solid in the cold air of the forest. She can feel his breath on her ear.

She watches dumbly as he fits her fingers into the lightsaber’s grooves and presses it on.

The blade that comes out is red, not blue.

_(that isn’t right)_

_(this isn’t what I want)_

His cheek is against hers and his arms enfold her. _Isn’t it?_

_(no)_

_Do you want it to be able to hurt you again?_

_(NO)_

He touches her somehow, inside her mind, in the place where rage is bound up by fear. As if his touch is a key to those bonds, she feels the rage blossom and her heart pounding and she gazes down at the thing that has hurt her and she hates it as she has never hated anything.

_Do you know what you want now?_ whispers her enemy into her mind. Still holding her. He will hold her like this forever if that is what it takes.

_(yes)_

_Then do it._

She closes her eyes and the lightsaber changes in her hand.

A second blade comes out of the bottom. It is the color of blood.

This she understands. This is a staff, not a sword. She has held a weapon like this a thousand times.

She hears her enemy laughing.

_Beautiful,_ he says, and he turns his head. His lips touch her cheek. _Now finish it._

Their hands together drive the double-bladed lightsaber into the damaged torture droid. For a moment, it is the red-haired man, and it screams, but that quickly fades and becomes the rattle of dying electronics.

And it is dead.

 


	7. Chapter 7

She woke. Her memory was still fogged, but the dream was as sharp as a knife.

She was in her enemy’s arms.

“Did we…is it…?”

He put his thumb under her chin and lifted her head so that he could look into her eyes. They gazed at each other from a few inches apart. She had the feeling that he was studying her, and then, very slowly, he smiled.

_You did well. I am proud of you._

She did not know that she was about to sob until it came out of her, and then she was crying into his shoulder like a lost child.

It had been many years since anyone held her when she cried. It had been even longer since anyone told her they were proud of her…hadn’t it? She had a vague memory of a man, a friend, gripping her forearms and telling her that she was amazing, but she could not get hold of it. It seemed to slip away, into the memories that she could not quite see.

Her enemy stroked her bare back slowly, his fingers tracing each knob on her spine, down and back. _It will be all right._

Slowly, she quieted. For a long timeless time, she lay against him and she knew that she should fear him, but all she could remember was that their hands together on the lightsaber as they killed the thing that had hurt her.

_You’re safe._

She took a shuddering breath. She wanted to believe him, but how…?

_Stay with me. Stay with me, and I’ll keep you safe._

That was what she had always wanted, wasn’t it? Someone to stay with. Someone who would not leave.

_(don’t leave)_

“I would never leave my student,” he said aloud, and she caught the faintest mental echo when he spoke, an old betrayal scabbed over but still aching.

A betrayal that matched her own. She had gnawed at her own abandonment so often that there was hardly any emotion left on the bones, and yet still it ached.

_(perhaps…the two of us…together…)_

“Your student,” she said hoarsely. Not disagreeing. Trying the idea out on her tongue. She laughed. “I swore I’d kill you.”

“You may try as often as you like,” he said lightly. He was still stroking her back, but delicately now, only with his fingertips.

“You are my enemy.”

He turned his head. His breath in her ear made her shiver. “I could also be your master.”

She wanted to deny it, but before she could form the thought, his mind opened. She saw herself in him, not servant but student. Saw herself standing with a double-bladed lightsaber in her hand, saw them battling together, blade to blade, testing and trying and finding each other good.

Saw them together, shoulder to shoulder, back to back, over and over, like a hall of mirrors, but in every reflection they stand together, not apart.

“Master,” she said musingly, and was shocked at the strength of his response. His mind against hers went fierce and hot, and his hand flattened against her back. He slid his other hand up her jawline and fisted in her hair.

“ _Again,”_ he growled.

_(what?)_

“Say that again.”

“Mas—“ she began, and he closed his mouth over hers, catching the word between them.

His mouth was as hot as the rest of the room was cold. His tongue flicked over her lips, not trying to part them, not yet.

A pulse began to pound between her legs.

She had felt desire before. She had coupled twice before, on Jakku, with humans or those close enough to human as made no odds. The act had not lived up to wanting it, either time, and she had come to think of desire as something ultimately unsatisfying, like dreams that cannot live up to reality.

She never felt it so strongly as this.

Her enemy’s lips left hers, slid down her jaw and over her throat. His touch was gentle until it wasn’t. Soft lips and then a sharpness of teeth—and then tender kisses to cool the sudden sting.

His fingertips stroked her back, sank his nails in for a heartbeat, and then more caresses, lightly, leaving trails of fire across her skin. She heard herself whimper.           

“You said you wouldn’t hurt me,” she said. Trying to laugh.

His hands stilled. She could have cursed herself, because that was the last thing she wanted.

Her enemy lifted his face from the delicate skin of her throat. His lips quirked up in a smile.

“Well,” he said. “Perhaps a little.”

She was too ashamed to make the answer she wanted to, but he could read her mind and so he heard it anyway.

_(good)_

__Something—she knew perfectly well what—was growing hard against her leg. She reached for him, but he caught her hand and drew it up to his mouth. She felt him laughing against her palm.

He kissed her fingers, drew one in, and sucked it until she gasped. His teeth closed on the web between her thumb and forefinger and she started at the pain, but an instant later he was working his way up her arm with lips and tongue.

His other hand left her back and he set it on her thigh.

_Let me in,_ he said in her mind.

She did not know if he meant her body or her mind or both.

_Yes._

She shifted in his lap, parting her legs. His hand slid upward, along her thigh, and brushed across the healing scratches left by—

Her mind was suddenly full of metal, the remembered scraping of the torture droid’s thin arms, clawing at her flesh outside and in.

_(no no I killed it we killed it it’s supposed to be dead)_

He stopped. His hand hovered over her, and she could feel his hardness, but the eyes that met her were grave.

And then, again, _Let me in._

_I’ll help you._

_Let me in._

_(no I can’t I can’t there’s a reason)_

A request, first, then an order. Tenderness, then teeth. _Let. Me. In._

_(but)_

He lowered his hand onto her body. She felt the memory of metal, but underneath it, the heat of his touch. And then words, a promise, and she could see far enough into his mind to know it was the truth.

_I will never let anyone touch you like that again._

She opened her thoughts, then, just a little, and he slipped into her mind as his fingertips slipped into her body.

She felt him going deep. Past the surface layers, where they share thoughts. Past the emotions that were half-physical, the coiled rage and fear and the bright overlay of lust. Stopping just short of her very core, the place of memories and hopes and dreams, and what was anyone, really, but their memories and their dreams?

She tensed, prepared to defend her mind against him, but he did not try to go any farther. Instead he waited, inside her mind, while in the outer world, his hands moved on her body.

There was rawness as he found her wounds, and then there was the warmth of Force healing. The dark memories tried to surge, but he would not let them. She could feel them for a heartbeat, but it was washed away by the flush of heat. His thoughts were inside her, as intimately as his fingers.

_Hush. Take it…yes. Like that. There’s only you and I here…_

There had been something else…something bad…but he stood between her and it, a black angel with a flaming sword. She did not have to fear it, so long as he was there. All she needed to think about was his hands touching her, his thumb stroking slowly over and over and over…

_(yes there yes)_

Her enemy, her lover. He slid his fingers into her slick flesh, harder and deeper, while she whimpered.

This was everything she’d ever wanted and never gotten. This was pleasure from someone who knew, almost before she did, where she wanted to be touched.

_(how does he know)_

_(how far in my mind did he get)_

For a moment, she lost the rhythm. There was something—something important—she was supposed to remember—something she had to keep secret—

_Hush._

He dragged the nails of his free hand down her body, between her breasts, over the tender skin of her stomach. She cried out, from surprise as much as pain, and then his fingers were back in the proper rhythm and she was pushing shamelessly against them and pleasure overwhelmed her and drove out even the memory of pain.

He cradled her in his arms while she shook, two fingers still deep inside her. Every motion made her gasp and set off another round of trembling.

At last, she settled. Her body felt heavy and relaxed. Her mind was…quiet.

“Now my turn,” he said.

_(yes)_

He pulled his clothes off and tossed them aside. His body was lean and hard and seamed with scars. She would learn the story behind each one, she thought, but not now.

He pushed her back down on the bed and knelt between her legs.

She looked up at him and for a moment she was him, looking down at herself, and her thoughts were dark and full of lust but still there was…hesitation.

She did not want him to hesitate. She wanted him inside her. She wanted to not be alone any longer.

Inch by inch, slowly at first, he coaxed her open. She was wet and aching, but it had been a long time and he was not small.

She bit her lower lip and lifted her hips to ease his entrance, her tightness yielding painfully before him, until at last he filled her.

He looked down at the joining of their bodies, then up at her. She felt a flush of shame at how cool and remote he seemed, when she was sweating and panting under him. He must be able to feel how ready she had been.

Her enemy leaned on one arm, trailing his fingers over her breasts and downward. He laid his hand flat across her stomach, and she felt again that strange feeling of ownership.

_Yes. This is right._

Whether it was his touch or something he did inside her mind, she didn’t know, but she no longer felt ashamed.

Slowly then fiercely, he gave her everything they both wanted, and she no longer felt alone.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who's commented! I was trying to keep up with thanks, but now I'm backlogged. But please know that I read every comment and am thrilled that you're enjoying it.
> 
> Now, back to the smut.

Rey woke to a pleasant ache and the feeling of having slept very well indeed.

_(it’s been quite a while)_

_(but even then, it was never anything like that!)_

It was so cold, though. Did the First Order not heat their bases?

She stretched, then burrowed deeper beneath the blankets. Something nagged at her memory, like a forgotten chore.

_(the First Order)_

Her memory clicked together, like relays switching open inside a lock. A door opened inside her head.

The First Order.

Her eyes snapped open.

The enemy.

The enemy was Kylo Ren.

A Sith lord who had butchered Jedi.

A Sith lord who lay curled around her, warming her with his own body.

She was Rey, and she was on the Starkiller base and Kylo Ren had taken her prisoner in the forest and had taken her, far more intimately, the night before.

Rey lay frozen.

She remembered _everything._

Finn. The flight from Jakku. The interrogation chamber.

And the man lying next to her, his chest against her back, who had made love to her with his hands that were stained with the blood of innocents.

He had gone out while she slept and come in again, she thought. He must have, because he was fully dressed beside her, with one gloved hand lying between her breasts.

Most likely that meant that he was not asleep.

If he was not asleep, then he was awake, and that meant—

Kylo Ren laughed softly against the back of her neck.

“Very good, Rey,” he said. “Very good indeed.”

 

She lunged off the bed, rolling off the side and onto the floor. She needed a weapon—any weapon—anything at all—

The cabin was distressingly bare. And he was distressingly unconcerned. He sat up, draping his forearms over his knees. He was not wearing the mask.

_(no of course not who wears a mask to bed)_

“I thought it might be a few more days,” he admitted. “You’re very strong, but whatever drugs the droid pumped into you could have dropped a rancor. I thought perhaps I’d have to use the Force to heal your memory, if you didn’t come back on your own.”

“Liar,” she growled. “Why would you heal me?”

He waved a hand over his head in a complicated gesture, and the lights came up. Only a little, but to her darkness-adjusted eyes, it was searingly bright. She blinked back tears.

She could hear him moving and crab-walked backward, but when she could see again, he was standing at the foot of the bed, only a few feet away.

“Of course I’d heal you,” he said. He took a step forward and she scrambled to her feet. “You’re my student.”

Rey choked on a denial, but she remembered the night before. She remembered calling him _master._

Kylo Ren was before her. She hadn’t even seen him move.

His hands were on her. He was pushing her back and his mind was coming down over hers as it had before, a weight of velvet darkness, heavy and…

…welcome.

_(no! no I don’t want this!)_

_Are you sure?_ he asked.

He was larger than she was and stronger. He drove her back, step by step, not hurting her, merely driving her, until she was against the wall and there was nowhere else to go.

_You’re mine. I am yours. You belong here with me._

_(get back get away I won’t I’m_ not _)_

_You are. You will. You can be._

She could not look away from his eyes.

He was in her mind now. Rey could feel him there, penetrating deeper and deeper, into her most intimate thoughts.

_(no get out! I won’t let you--)_

But it was too late. Had been too late, perhaps, since the night before, since he had ordered her to let him in, and like a fool, she had given him the key.

He did not take her mind like an army breaking down a wall, but like a man undressing a lover. He touched her shields and drew them away, one by one, letting them fall. She retreated back, back, there was something she was supposed to protect, there was a secret she did not dare to think of, she had to hold it…

_Why?_ he asked.

_(because it was the last of the Jedi, the map to him, the last, the very last…)_

He pulled down another set of shields.

_What good are Jedi? What good are they, if there is only one and he has hidden himself away rather than face the world?_

She was aware that in the real world, her spine was pressed against the wall and he had her wrists pinned over her head.

_The galaxy is full of terrible people, and the Force Sensitive are defenseless against them, and all the Jedi have done is fail and die and flee…_

His hands slid together, trapping both her wrists in one hand. He wedged his knee in between hers.

_All we can do is stay together. All we have, who are not Jedi, is each other. I know things. Things I’ve learned to survive. Dark and light._

_I’ll teach you everything I can._

The shields he tore down now were flimsy things. He had skirted most of her mind’s defenses already.

_(you can’t—you can’t—)_

He could. His gloved hand was between her thighs now, stroking, the leather cool and smooth. She could feel the seams on the fingertips resting against her swollen flesh.

_There. You want it there. Do you feel how it could be?_

Space have pity on her, it felt incredible.

_(I’ll never tell you about the map!)_

“Oh, Rey,” he said aloud. His voice was gentle, rueful. “You told me that days ago.”

His leather-clad fingers spread her open and his mind tore her final shield down.

She was horrified to find that she was soaking wet.

It was by will alone she kept him out now. She could not stop him as he showed her a memory—two days earlier, her mind dazed from drugs and torture, and a black shadow bending over her, whispering into her mind _the_ _map, tell me about the map…_

And her secrets had unfolded for him the way her body unfolded now.

_(no—yes—no—!)_

Two fingers, moving. The leather felt strange inside her and she rocked her hips against it, hating it, loving it, wanting more.

_Yes. Feel that._

She had no choice. He was using the Force, somehow, sending power along individual nerves, something like healing but very different. Driving her closer and closer to the edge, but not letting her cross over.

She had no idea that he could do that. She had no idea that _anyone_ could do that.

The memory he showed her scrolled on, in an eternal present, as Kylo Ren leaves her sleeping in his quarters and walks to the conference room. He enters the coordinates from memory and the hologram slots together above the table. He punches in a few final commands and locks it into place.

“Well,” says the red-haired man behind him. “I see the little Jedi whore was worth something after all.”

General Hux steps forward. His eyes are pale and quite mad, as they have always been. “If you’re done,” he says casually, “I’d quite like to play with her awhile longer. The droid might have softened her up, but I didn’t get a turn.”

Kylo Ren knows that the map is stored safely in the base’s central memory core now. He knows this, which is why he allows himself the luxury of drawing his lightsaber and smashing it down through the conference table, carving it apart in a few brutal strokes. Sparks rain through the room, and stormtroopers run into with fire extinguishers. (He is half convinced that the computer tracks his whereabouts and keeps a fire suppression squad nearby at all times.)

He turns his head and looks at Hux.

“…or not,” says Hux, looking at the destruction. Kylo can tell by the agitation in the air around him that he is frightened, and fear makes Hux angry. It is part of the reason that Kylo allows himself the luxury of destruction when temper overwhelms him.

“You will not touch her again,” says Kylo Ren. “Do I make myself clear?”

_I meant it,_ he whispered into Rey’s mind, as the memory faded. _I will kill him before he hurts you._

_(but)_

His body still pinned hers against the wall. He had been stroking her the entire time, with the Force, with his hands, and her body was his completely. She found herself breathing in unison with him and she could not even moan.

_(please—)_

_And I will teach you to kill him, my student._

He slid a third finger inside her, stretching a little, just slightly painful. The leather is starting to warm up now, but it is still strange and slick and cool.

Images flash across her mind, one after the other, and she cannot stop seeing them.

_—_ their hands stabbing down together on the lightsaber, destroying the droid—

_—_ his gloved hands sliding up over her body, dark fingers on pale skin, while she moans in pleasure—

_—_ returning to Jakku, to the scrap buyers who humiliated her and taking bloody vengeance for a decade of petty, grinding indignities—

_—_ Rey kneeling in front of him, her mouth working against his shaft while his hand clenches in her hair—

_—_ General Hux running. The two of them stalking him, dark robed predators in a wood, while their prey flees. Hux pulls up short, face to face with Kylo Ren, and turns to run—directly onto Rey’s lightsaber. His mouth forms a silent scream of pain as he slides to the ground—

On that image, he finally let her climax. Pleasure crashed over her in a wave. Rey cried out, suddenly free.

She fell forward. Her vision went gray around the edges, and she closed her eyes.

Kylo Ren released her hands and drew her against his chest. Even that motion changed the pressure of his fingers inside her and she cried out again.

She shuddered against him for long seconds. When she was nearly finished, he drew his fingers in and out, once, twice, quickly, and set her off again.

With every pulse, inside her mind, he unmade her resistance, until she could not even remember why she had wanted to resist

_More?_ he asked. _Do you want more?_

_How much more can you take?_

_(no more)_

_(please)_

He chuckled. _We’ll work on that, too._

She had no defenses left. She had raw power, but it was untrained. Kylo Ren stood at the very center of her soul, at the core of who she was, and there was nothing that she could do to keep him away.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We interrupt this smut for a short moment of tenderness!
> 
> (Please note: If you read this before reading Chapter 9, it is because I am stupid and didn't hit the right button.)

In that place beyond time, Kylo Ren looks into his student’s secret heart, and what he finds is not unexpected.

It is a desert at a night.

The air is cold. The wind is full of grit and the distant song of sand.

The dunes run up to the sky in all directions, but this does not trouble him. It does not matter what misdirection she throws at him. He already knows the way.

He begins to walk in the direction of her core.

It is a long and weary way, but he does not tire. His boots leave imprints in the sand that not even the wind can scour away. It amuses him to think that years from now, if a Jedi came this way, they would see his footprints on her heart.

He crests the last dune, and there is a great machine below him, shattered into pieces.

The scavenger girl is curled on her side, in a small nest in the center of the ruined machine. She is alone.

She is very young here, and this does not surprise him. In our secret hearts, many of us are frightened children.

Very well. Whatever they may do in the real world, in this place he will treat her like a brother.

He crouches beside her. Her child’s face is stained with tears, and she has no one to wipe them away.

She looks up.

He can see himself reflected in her eyes, a tall shadow, barely human, masked and cloaked.

She is frightened, so he takes off the mask and sets it aside.

He has kept his word. He kept the fear at bay. He watches her expression change, until she looks up at him with hope instead.

“Are you…are you the one I’m waiting for?”

It is a moment before he can speak. His heart aches for her. The Jedi will say that Sith are evil, and they are not always wrong, but they cannot say that Sith do not feel. What Kylo Ren feels now is pity, and a burning hatred for those who left this girl behind.

He will never repeat their mistake.

He unclasps the black cloak from around his throat and tucks it in around her.

“Yes,” he says. “I’ve come for you. I’m sorry it took me this long to find you.”


	10. Chapter 10

Something broke inside her mind. Rey did not understand what had happened. It was agony and joy so strong it was nearly worse. It felt as if her chest had split and an ocean of sorrow had poured out, as if an ancient wound had cracked open, to heal at last.

She could feel Kylo Ren’s mind on hers, like hands, smoothing, moving, sculpting her thoughts. Reshaping her very being, into something stronger and finer and infinitely darker.

_You are mine. We will be together. Let me show you._

Everywhere there was fear, he gave her rage. She tasted the blackness of it, the heat, and it gave her courage. Everywhere there was loneliness, he poured himself, filling her up with his presence, until they were twined intimately, inside and out.

If anyone seeks to bring her down, they will have him to contend with. If they fall, they will fall together, back to back, with bodies piled at their feet. She will no longer be alone.

She will never be alone again.

_My student._

_(…yes.)_

He was still holding her, though he had moved to draw her against his chest, as he carried her once before. She reached up and clung to him, less like a lover and more like a drowning woman holding on to rescue.

_I’m here. I will always be here._

It was a promise. Rey found that she believed him. That she was incapable of not believing him. He was a pillar of her universe now, and the stars would fall before he would leave her side.

At last, she opened her eyes.

He was not smiling. His face over hers was grave, concerned. “All right?” he said.

“All right,” she whispered. She was all right. Everything, at last, was all right.

_My student,_ he said in her mind again, and she turned toward him. As if he were the other half of herself.

Which, perhaps, he was.

There are always two, with Sith. One to learn and one to teach. Sometimes they trade places. But the important thing is that there are always two, and neither of them are alone.

It was all she’d ever wanted.

Rey knew what she had to do.

She leaned forward far enough for her lips to brush his, and whispered, against his lower lip, “Your turn.”

She knew that she’d startled him. Not with the thought, perhaps, but with how whole-heartedly she embraced it. His eyes went wide, just for an instant, as he stepped back, freeing her.

She looked up at him. She had not seen so deeply into his mind as he had into hers, but she knew what he wanted.

She wanted to give it to him, for all that he had given her.

She dropped to her knees, one fist on the floor, and knelt before him.

“Master,” she said.

 

 

 

Triumph flooded Kylo Ren, as strong as lust or love or fury. His breath went out in a long, ragged sigh.

He had done it. She was his.

His first instinct was to take her right there, not bother even to shed most of his clothes. He was fairly certain that no one had ever taken her from behind before. She might not even know that humans could do that. He could drive into her, opening her up in ways that no one else ever had, until she screamed his name—or _Master._ Master would be even better.

But passion was only strength so long as it was not weakness. And he had a duty to teach her, just as she had a duty to learn.

There was so much training before them. He savored the thought of it. Combat. Tactics. Using the Force to heal and to kill. Drawing secrets from an unwitting mind.

And other things, of course. How to please him and how to take pleasure in return. He planned to take her in every way that a man could take a woman. Which could be used as reward or punishment, depending on the need.

She was still kneeling. Her eyes were on the floor. If she had felt any of that, she gave no sign.

It seemed unlikely that she would need much punishment.

He reached down and tipped her chin up with his hand and smiled down at her.

_Student,_ he said, through the link between them. There were a hundred mental echoes behind it.

Echoes of words like _Lover_ and _Ally_ and _Beloved._

But stronger than any of those was a word that he would hammer into her for the rest of their lives, with every touch and every thrust and every victory they shared together.

_Mine._

_(Yours.)_


	11. Epilogue

The briefing was, mercifully, short. There was no new information to be had. A crew of stormtroopers had been dispatched to sit in the middle of nowhere and take photos of the starfield, to triangulate Skywalker’s exact location. There was no way to hurry the process. Computers worked as fast as they worked, and responded to neither threats nor flattery.

Kylo Ren listened to the report, nodded once, and turned to leave.

“One moment, Ren,” said Hux.

The Sith turned a few inches, just enough to be an acknowledgement.

“Aren’t you finished with your little Jedi whore yet?” asked Hux.

Kylo Ren looked at him in silence. He knew that Hux disliked not being able to see his eyes. The minor functionary who had delivered the astronomy report squirmed with embarrassment.

He waited until the moment had drawn out into agony, then held out a hand.

Rey came through the doorway.

Her head was shaved very close. Her skin was chalk white against the black robes she wore. The only color to be seen was the red mark that Kylo Ren’s mouth had left against her throat.

She inclined her head to the Sith. “Master,” she said.

The presence of the red-haired man should have frightened her, but she had no fear left. Only fury, as smooth and black as obsidian.

Hux gaped at her, only for an instant, but both of them saw it.

_His time will come,_ said Kylo Ren in her head, _and you will hold the blade._ Although she could not see his eyes through the mask, she felt them share a glance, like a secret joke.

“If you speak of my student that way again, General Hux,” said Kylo Ren, very calmly, “I will cut out your tongue.”

Hux blinked.

Kylo strode away. His boots rang on the deckplates.

She fell in step behind him, two paces back, one to the left, as befit a student behind her master.

As she passed Hux, she turned her head and said, just as calmly, “I am no Jedi.”

For once, the General had nothing to say.

They walked the halls together, to the interrogation chamber. Kylo opened the door and stepped back.

_When you are ready, my student._

Rey paused on the threshold. She looked at the chair and the torture droid quiescent in the corner. She searched her soul, and again, there was only fury.

“You will need to make a lightsaber,” said her master. “But for this one task, you may borrow mine.”

He slipped the weapon into her hand.

It was a gesture of intimacy, she knew, and also one of trust. Trust, perhaps in her…or in his control _over_ her.

_Already you are thinking like a Sith,_ he said, and his voice in her mind was warm with pride. Rey felt her body respond—but no. There would be time enough for that later. For now, she had a job to do.

The lightsaber hummed as she shot the blade.

The room filled with the scream of metal as she chopped the chair and the droid into pieces. Sparks flew, stinging her face and scalp. Gas vented into the air with a hiss of escaping steam. Klaxons sounded, but she did not care.

The thing was dead.  

Her mind was red, red, red.

Two stormtroopers came to the door, looked inside, looked at Kylo Ren standing with his arms folded, watching. The two stormtroopers remembered urgent business somewhere else.

At last, it was done. Rey wiped sweat from her forehead. She had destroyed the room. The chair lay in palm-sized pieces and exposed wiring hung from rents in the walls.

Kylo Ren held out his hand.

Rey tilted an eyebrow at him. Just for an instant…just long enough to make him remember that she had vowed to kill him.

Then she turned off the lightsaber and slid it into his palm.

Behind the mask, she felt him smile.

They left the interrogation room behind. She walked two paces behind him. They moved through the decks of the base like two scavenger birds, dark on dark.

On the observation deck, they stopped. The glittering mass of the galaxy spread out above them, a fire of distant stars. It was a clever artifact of computers, not the actual view from Starkiller Base, but it was beautiful.

She stood beside him. She could feel the heat of his body even through the robes.

“Master,” she said quietly.

“Speak,” he said. To belie the formality of his words, he moved his gloved fingers along the railing and covered hers. He stroked the back of her hand tenderly, sending a thrill up her arm.

There are other things they would have to do. There was the Supreme Leader, whom she had not yet met, and whom she had seen, in the deepest part of Kylo Ren’s mind, that he did not trust.  There was Hux, whom he had promised that she would be allowed to kill. And there was that old piece of family business, Skywalker, cowering on an island somewhere, who would have to be dealt with as well.

But they were together. They would face these things together.

She would never be alone again.

Rey smiled at him, just a little.

“How _does_ one go about getting a mask…?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, and for all the lovely comments. I am so glad that you've enjoyed this. This was not a pairing I had originally intended to write, but all of the bile I kept seeing against it got my back up and I said "I will show you unhealthy!" and stomped to the keyboard. I have enjoyed it a lot, and thank you all for coming along on the ride with me.


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